Ping Pong Summer Review: When Karate Kick Meets Ping Pong

The 1980s are one of those decades that’s fondly remembered by many who lived through it and even those not born during it. One of the things that exploded during that decade was ping pong. Writer/Director Michael Tully revisits and embraces the decade in his new movie “Ping Pong Summer,” but it ultimately tries harder to be “’80s” than tell a compelling story.

Taking place in the summer of 1985, awkward nerd Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte) is on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland with his rather odd family. There he meets equally nerdy Teddy (Myles Massey) who shows him around town and especially a local arcade. Here he gets the attention of a local girl Stacy (Emmi Shockley) which brings on the ire of her boyfriend and local bully Lyle (Joseph McCaughtry) who challenges Rad to a ping pong match.

This movie is nothing more than a “Karate Kid” style story with ping pong, instead of karate. It has the basic formula of that kind of story: nerdy boy gets a bully angry, they compete and nerd gets beaten, nerd trains and then beats bully in the end. The story is so predicable that the audience will see every little plot thread coming before they happen.

Everything that happens in between the competition isn’t all that interesting either. Rad’s family does all the typical things on vacation you see in all these movies. Father (John Hannah) tries to keep the family doing things together, the mother (Lea Thompson) is the awkward caring mother who can easily embarrass her kids and the “I hate everything” sister (Helena May Seabrook.) Each of these characters stay in their designed roles without any kind of development or showing any reason to like them.

There are also various scenes of Rad hanging out with Teddy and even going on a “date” with Stacy. These scenes, meant to create character development and make the audience connect with the characters, all seem pointless and drawn out. They don’t go anywhere and neither do they do what they intended to do. It’s as if Tully at one point realized he needed to tell a story somewhere and just threw whatever he thought fit into the movie.

That’s not to say the cast does a terrible job. Each character performs admirably with the material they have. Conte pulls off the awkward nerd character perfectly. Susan Sarandon as scary lady/Mr. Miyagi character Randi Jammer does a servicable job, but her talents are wasted when you realize her lines are basically nothing more than the usual advice from a pro we’ve seen so much of. It is saying much that she looks incredibly bored throughout the movie. The scene where she is training Rad she seems happier drinking a liter of beer and dunking a bucket of water on Rad’s head than acting.

The best performance is by John Hannah. He tries to add some personality to his character, but his Scottish accent makes his character look like he belongs in a different movie. He also acts like he knows his role is garbage and just goes all out balls to the walls nuts.

This movie takes place in the eighties and the film does everything to shove that fact down your throat. They have eighties music play all over, over the top eighties fashion all over, the video games in the arcade are right in your face and the overuse of eighties slang. This movie is more ’80s than movies made in the decade.

All that’s missing is an appearance by Hulk Hogan.

“Ping Pong Summer” is a by the numbers “Karate Kid” style movie with very little to avert from the style’s tropes. The many scenes that go nowhere and the predictability far overshadow the solid acting. Its preoccupation with showing the audience that yes this is the eighties overshadows any effort at storytelling.